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When we got out of the car, the Negro stopped and wiped his face with a white handkerchief. His hat was gray and he held it in his left hand, then put it back on his head. He kept the power mower running, and it sounded loud but far away, the way they do. He never quite looked at us, and he never quite looked away.

We went up the stoop and tried the screen door. It was locked and there wasn’t any bell. I rattled the door and shouted. A guy in a white jacket came out, carrying a towel. He looked at us through the screen.

“Kelly,” I said. “We’re expected.”

He pointed to his right. “Down at the dock,” he said. He went back inside.

The house was backed against a half-moon of forest. A brown path led in among the trees to the left of the house, going gradually downhill. We went down it. Behind us, the Negro put his handkerchief away and went back to work.

A voice droned ahead. The path wound downhill. Through the trees, there were blue glimpses of the Sound.

We came out on a narrow strip of shade-mottled lawn. At the lower end, a swath of smooth pebbles led down into the water. A little blond girl in a ruffled bathing suit stood half-bent in the shallows, filling her green pail with water.

The lawn was flanked by brush and trees, down the sides and overhanging the water’s edge. To the right, an unpainted dock jutted out atilt into the water. A white motorboat nodded beside it. A boy and girl of about twenty were on and off a float a ways away. Four people sat in white-fence lawn chairs to the right, three of them watching the little girl.

The woman of about twenty-seven, with the white bathing suit and the ash-blond hair and the vertical frown lines between her brows, would be the mother of the little girl and the sister of one or both of the people out on the float. The nondescript middle-aged heavy couple in city clothes would be her parents, he the brother of the McArdle I’d met at the law office, this one older and tougher and not a lawyer. The gross ancient bald man wearing young man’s sports clothes would be Andrew McArdle.

I stopped and looked at him. The short-sleeved white shirt showed flabby blue-veined white-skinned arms, the muscles so little able to bear weight that the upper slopes of the arms were only skin over narrow frail bone, the fat all hanging in long bags of skin underneath. The shirt was open at the throat, showing gray flesh writhing over a convulsive Adam’s apple. There was no chest. The shirt sagged down to a gross belly. Tan slacks covered the stick legs beneath, and the feet were bare, looking like frozen plaster molds.

His head sagged back, his mouth hung open, the thin-veined lids were stretched over his eyes. The sound of his breathing was very loud.

The voice I’d heard had been the middle-aged man. He stopped and looked at us. The women turned their heads and looked, and then the ash-blonde watched the little girl again. The boy and girl on the float stood still, arms at their sides, gazing in at us. The little girl ignored us. She laughed suddenly and splashed herself with water.

The ancient man gulped and rolled his head around and opened his eyes. He stared at Bill. “Willard.” His voice was a croak that had once been a ringing bass.

I came across the lawn, Bill trailing me. “Mr. Krish -man called you,” I said.

The present slowly came into his eyes. He looked at me. “Yes. Arthur, go up to the house. All of you, up to the house.”

The middle-aged woman smiled like a beautician. “You shouldn’t exert yourself, Papa.” She got up and crouched over him, hoping everyone would think she was solicitous. She was afraid to strangle him. “Don’t you talk too long, now,” she said.

Arthur said to her, “Come on.”

The ash-blonde called to the little girl, “Linda. Come here.”

She came out of the water, carrying the green pail. She stopped in front of me, serious, squinting up at me with sun in her eyes. “Why do you limp?”

“I was in an accident.”

“When?”

“Come along, Linda,” said her mother.

“Two months ago,” I said.

“Where?”

“Your mother wants you.”

They trailed by us, across the lawn toward the path. The middle-aged woman said, “I’m
coming,
Arthur.”

They trailed diagonally up the lawn. The last thing, the ash-blonde made the little girl empty the water out of her pail. Then they were gone, between the trees.

He told us to sit down, and we did. He kept his head back, twisted at an odd angle on a faded flower-pattern pillow. His voice was just above a whisper, no louder than his breathing. “Your father is dead,” he said.

I said, “I want to know about Eddie Kapp.”

“He went to jail. Years ago.” The head shook back and forth, slowly. “The Federal Government is a different proposition, Eddie.”

“Is he still in jail? Eddie Kapp, is he still in jail?”

“Oh, I suppose so. I don’t know. I have taken the final sabbatical, young man. I am no longer chained to the office, I—” His wandering eyes and wandering mind touched Bill again, and he frowned. “Willard? You shouldn’t be here, you know that.”

Bill was scared. He said, “No, you mean my father.” He broke the mood before McArdle said anything useful.

McArdle’s face started to close up. He was in the present again, and he remembered what he’d said. He watched me warily.

I said, “Why shouldn’t he be here?”

“Who? What are you talking about? I am retired, an old man with a bad heart...”

“My father shouldn’t have come to New York, should he? Why not?”

“I don’t know. My memory wanders sometimes, I’m not always responsible for what I say.”

The boy and girl came dripping out of the water. McArdle’s head twisted to glare at them. “Go out there! Stay out there! This is none of your business!”

“We’re going up to the house,” said the girl. She was snotty. She’d had money all her life, she didn’t care if she inherited or not. “Come on, Larry.”

They paused to fiddle with towels and cigarettes and sunglasses. I said, “Better hurry.”

The girl was going to be snotty to me, but then she wasn’t. She grabbed her gear and hip-jiggled away. She looked discontented, frustrated. The boy flexed his muscles at me, frowning because he’d been left out, and followed her.

When they were gone, I turned back to McArdle. “Who would know if Eddie Kapp was out or in?”

“I don’t know. So long ago.” The eyes misted again, cleared a little. “Maybe his sister. Dorothea. She married a chain-market manager.”

“What name?”

“I’m trying to remember. Carter, something like that. Castle, Kimball... Campbell! That was it, Robert Campbell.”

I wrote it down. “That was in New York?”

“He managed a chain market in Brooklyn. A Bohack? I don’t remember. A young man. She was young, too, much younger than her brother. A pretty thing, black hair. Glowing.”

He was starting to dream again. I said, “Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”

“What? What?” His head nearly raised up from the pillow, and then subsided. “Don’t shout so,” he said. His breathing was louder. “I am an old man, my memory is failing me, I have a bad heart. You cannot rely on what I say. I should have told Samuel no. I should have refused.”

“Samuel Krishman? He doesn’t know the answer, does he?”

The belly laughed, shaking him. “He never knew anything. A fool!”

“But you do.”

He started the old man routine again. I said, “Tell me who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town.”

“I don’t know.”

“Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”

“Go away. I don’t know.”

“Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”

“No. No!”

I kept my voice low. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”

“I’m an old man—”

“You’ll die. Here and now.”

“Let me go. Let the past alone!”

I bowed my head, covered my face with my hands. I plucked the glass oval out. I closed my left eye, and then I was blind. I kept the right lid open, but it was a strain with the eye out. It was warm in my palm.

I lowered my hands in my lap. Still blind, I raised my face toward him. I smiled. “I can see your soul this way,” I said. “It’s black.”

I heard a choking. I opened my eye and he was gaping, staring, choking, his face turning bluish red. I put the glass eye back in.

Bill was already running up the path, shouting for the family.

I had meant to frighten him. He was afraid of death, and I think he would have answered me. I had no idea how strongly it would affect him. I hadn’t meant him to die.

We had to stay and wait for the doctor. I told them our father had once worked for McArdle, Lamarck & Krishman. I told them he had died recently, but I didn’t tell them how. I told them he had told us once to look up his old bosses, they could maybe help us get a start in life.

They believed me. It was believable. Bill listened to me tell it, and then he knew it too. But he wasn’t meeting my glance. He thought I’d done it on purpose. I’d have to tell him, once we got away from here.

While we waited, I talked with Karen Thorndike. She was the ash-blonde. She was the daughter of Arthur and the woman with the beautician’s smile, as I’d supposed. She was divorced from Jerry Thorndike. She said, “You don’t want to come to New York.”

“Why not?”

“There’s nothing here but people clawing each other. Everybody wants to get to the top of the heap, and it’s a heap of human beings. A big hill of kicking, struggling human beings, trying to crawl up one another and be at the top.”

“You’re thinking of Jerry Thorndike,” I said. “You got burned. Not all the people in a city are like that.”

“They are in New York.”

Linda, the little girl, came over and started asking stupid questions. She was like her mother, interesting until she opened her mouth. I thought of taking my eye out for her, but not seriously.

The doctor was big and hearty. People paid him to be like him. His name was Heatherton. He wanted to know what we’d been talking about when the old man had had his attack. I said the weather in New York.

Nobody was really upset. He was eighty-two years old. They’d all been hanging around waiting anyway. After a while, I asked Dr. Heatherton if there was any reason for Bill and me to stay there any longer. He said no.

As we went out the private road, a gray Cadillac hearse purred by us, going in.

It wasn’t yet three. But it was Friday afternoon, so there was quite a bit of traffic headed toward the city, most of it in late-model cars.

We rode in silence for a while, and then I lit a cigarette and handed it out to Bill and he said, “No, thanks,” without looking away from the road.

I stuck the cigarette back between my lips and said, “Don’t be stupid. I didn’t want to kill him.”

“You said you were going to.” He glowered grimly at the road. “You told him you would and you did. I don’t know you any more, the Air Force did something to you. Or Germany.”

“Or being in the car with Dad.”

“All right, maybe that. Whatever caused it, I don’t like it. You can have the money in the bank. I’ll need the car, I’m going back to Binghamton.”

“You don’t care any more.”

“I’ll stop off and talk to that state cop, Kirk.”

“And tell him what?”

“I won’t tell him anything. Don’t worry, I’m not going to inform on you.”

“I’m not worried.”

“I’m going to ask him how they’re doing.”

“They aren’t doing. Tuesday it’ll be two months. They don’t have a lead, a clue, a chance, or a hope. If they did, it wouldn’t take two months. It’s us or nobody.”

“I can’t stay with you. I can’t be around you, with you pulling things like that.”

“I told you, that was a mistake. I didn’t mean for him to die.”

“Sure.”

“You’re a cluck, Bill. You’re three years older than me, but you’re a cluck. He knew who chased Dad out of town. Did you hear what he said?”

“I heard him.”

“He
knew.
Do you think I wanted him dead?”

He frowned at the wheel, thinking it over. After a while he glanced at me. I looked innocent. He glowered out at the highway again. “Then what the hell did you do it for?”

“I was trying to scare him. I didn’t know it would hit him that big. It must look pretty bad.”

In some out-of-the-way corner he found a grin. He took it out, dusted it off, put it on his face. It looked good there. “You don’t know how bad, Ray,” he said. “I about had a heart attack myself. You looked like something out of hell.” He glanced at me again, back at the traffic. “A little worse than usual,” he said.

“You want a cigarette?”

“I need one,” he said.

We went back to the hotel and sat around. We went out for dinner and bought some more Old Mr. Boston. We drank and smoked and talked and played gin a penny a point. He won.

After a while, we finished the booze and went to bed and turned the lights off. But I saw McArdle’s face, bluish red, the eyes bulging bigger and bigger. I got up and told Bill I was going out. He was asleep already, and he just grunted.

I went out and it was one o’clock in the morning. No liquor stores open. I found a bar, but the only thing he’d sell me to go was beer. I had five fast Fleischmann doubles on the rocks, and then I bought two quarts of Rheingold beer and brought them back to the room. I knew they’d make me throw up and they did, but after that I could go to sleep.

Johnson was around in the morning again. He wanted to talk. I had a split head, I told him to wait. He sat smoking in a chair while Bill and I hulked around and washed our faces and got dressed. Then the three of us went out for coffee.

We went up Broadway to a Bickford’s, and filled our trays. Johnson just had coffee. Bill and I had eggs.

At the table, Johnson stuck a spoon in his coffee and stirred for five minutes without paying any attention, while he talked. “I want to give you a little background on me,” he said. “I run a one-man agency. Maybe one or two jobs a month, enough to stay even with the bills. Last year I made thirty-seven hundred dollars. I hate the job, I don’t know why I stay in. Same way a little grocer down the block from the A&P won’t close up and go get a warehouse job. You keep waiting for something to happen, like in the paperbacks.”